tion, while medical historians such as Dr. Reines use it to denounce animal experimentation. So who do you think is more accurate?

Let us for a moment play devil's advocate and assume that we cannot know who is telling the true version of things as they happened 50 years ago.  Consider the following argument, then decide for yourself:

Animal experiments of themselves can be used to prove, or to disprove, almost anything, depending on the species of laboratory animal selected, the prevailing laboratory conditions, and of course, depending on the funding source. One very good example illustrates this point clearly. The injectable contraceptive Depo-provera has been used in several countries around the world over the last few decades. It was, however, banned in the USA by the FDA on the strength of animal tests which showed that the drug caused mammary cancer in Beagle dogs and uterine cancer in baboons. Yet, a few years ago the FDA unbanned the drug and now allows it to be marketed in the USA, on the strength of 20 years' human experience in those countries which used Depo-provera during that time, with apparently no ill-effects in all those women.  Conversely, Cyclosporin, a powerful anti-rejection drug causes severe
kidney, liver and even nerve damage in man, but not in dogs and cats.

Some of the best arguments against relying on animal tests actually come from the research scientists themselves. Professor Gerhard Zbinden, a world-renowned toxicologist and former consultant to the World Health Organisation , stated: "most adverse reactions which occur in man cannot be demonstrated, anticipated or avoided by the routine subacute and chronic (animal) toxicity experiment".

Dr. Ralph Heywood, past scientific director of the Huntingdon Research Centre (UK) admitted in 1989 that : "the best guess for the correlation of adverse reactions in man and animal toxicity data is somewhere between 5% and 25%."

It is the vivisectors who are telling each other constantly of the extrapolative difficulties due to species differences. This is no myth.  It is fact.

The main point is that there are similarities between animals and humans, but there are also innumerable differences, so that one cannot know whether one's animal data wil be relevant to humans until the human is effectively experimented upon. It is all guesswork (as vivisector Dr. F. Coulston has admitted). How can mutilating, diseasing and killing animals be justified when the results of these experiments are always inconclusive and meaningless?
THE ANIMAL TESTS ARE MEANINGLESS BECAUSE OF COUNTLESS GENETIC, PHYSIOLOGICAL AND ANATOMICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HUMANS AND ANIMALS RENDERING ANIMAL DATA FOR HUMAN MEDICAL RESEARCH UTTERLY UNRELIABLE.

Animal experimentation does not produce reliable results for human beings.  On the few occasions where the animal tests give the same result as in man, it occurs in RETROSPECT, i.e. after the human damage has been done.

The fact that animal experiments are so "flexible" (i.e. can be used to prove or to disprove almost anything), lends considerable weight to the idea that historically, they could have been used to "prove" what was already known from human clinical observation. There is no shortage of modern-day examples to show how some scientists "cook" their results in order to gain scientific prestige, or in order to obtain research grants.

Do we continue to do things the way we always have 'because that's the way things have been done'? Or do we look for new, scientific, more humane approaches?  When Einstein developed the theory of relativity, all physics changed and could never be the same again. We now need to make our own quantum leap in our thought processes with regards to health and disease and our methods of investigating them.  This won't be easy, because all change brings uncertainty and discomfort, but it is blatantly clear that the old methods have made no significant impression on the chronic diseases which continue to bring suffering to humanity.      Sheila Edwards

Professor Speth's Op-Ed (September 9, 2002) was more of an attack on the animal rights movement than a scientific discussion of using animal research to solve human problems.

He claims, for instance that the Thalidomide disaster resulted because the drug "was not adequately tested on animals." In "The Cruel Deception" (p.105) Robert Sharpe, PhD, cites R.D. Mann's "Modern Drug Use" as the source of his statement that "It's (Thalidomide's) ready clinical acceptance was no doubt based on an apparent lack of toxicity--animals could tolerate massive doses in routine tests without ill-effects." It wasn't until clinicians observed peripheral neuritis in patients taking the drug that suspicions began to emerge.

Australian obstetric physician W.G. McBride was one of the first to link the drug to the increase in phocomelic (seal-like) undeveloped limbs in new born children. He conducted experiments with guinea pigs and mice but no malformations resulted. Pharmacologists at the Distillers Company working with rats were also unsuccessful. (Sharpe p.106) It wasn't until they used a particular strain of New Zealand white rabbits, not just any rabbits, and at 25 to 300 times the human dosage, (C.R. Greek, MD, and J.S. Greek, DVM: "Specious Science" p.26) that the link was demonstrated.

The effect had failed to show up in "10 strains of rats, 15 strains of mice, 11 breeds of rabbits, 2 breeds of dogs, 3 strains of hamsters, 8 species of primates, and in other varied species such as cats, armadillos, guinea pigs, swine and ferrets in which Thalidomide has been tested, teratogenic (birth defects) effects have been induced only occasionally." (J.L Schardein, "Drugs as Teratogens" cited by Sharpe, p.107)

It was only through unusual persistence and using many different animals that Thalidomide's effects were demonstrated in animal models. As heart surgeon Moneim A. Fadali observed in "Animal Experimentation" (p. 33): "Alternative testing available
at the time in the late 1950's early 1960's--such as human cell culture--could have averted the colossal calamity." The calamity involved over 10,000 deformed children and an unknown number of foetuses too deformed to survive.

We owe the benefits of penicillin not to after-the-fact experiments on mice (Penicillin is lethal for guinea pigs, incidentally.) by Nobelist Sir Howard Florey in 1940 as claimed by Prof. Speth, but to the observational science of Sir Alexander Fleming who also received the Nobel Prize for his discovery in 1928. This is typical of many
discoveries which have been later "proved" by animal experiments.

Besides exposing people to harmful drugs, reliance upon animal models enabled the tobacco industry to hide the harmful effects of its product on humans for decades, because the animals forced to inhale tobacco smoke did not develop lung cancer. People were undergoing surgery without anesthetic after chloroform had been discovered because it excited rather than sedated dogs.

Because of obvious differences in physiology, absorption, metabolism, etc. as well as microscopic differences at the cellular and even molecular levels, it is only by coincidence that results obtained on another species can be applied to humans. The results of animal experimentation are reliably applicable only to the species being used.

Nevertheless, for various economic reasons, this medieval pseudoscience has remained the norm in spite of the many more accurate modern methods that have been available for some time. While proponents of animal experimentation are trying to legitimize this outmoded method by hiding behind the screen of cruelty claims put forth by the animal rights movement, scientists promoting truly scientific research are banding together to bring about a long overdue change to more scientific methods.

Physicians and other scientists have formed organizations to oppose animal experimentation on scientific grounds in Austria, Belgium, Europeans for Medical Advancement, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Italy and Japan. United States now has three: Medical Research Modernization Committee, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and Americans for Medical Advancement. These groups and individual scientists are attempting to alert the public to the invalidity of animal experimentation when it is applied to humans while the entrenched proponents of animal experiments are trying to maintain the status quo.  -Bina Robinson, Civitas
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Three letters in The Observer December 1, 2002

These cruel tests tell us next to nothing

You report certain scientists as saying it is 'vital' that Cambridge